Tom Oxley

CEO and Founder at Synchron

Speaker

I am a PhD neurologist passionate about neuroscience innovation and the underlying mechanisms of the human brain. twitter.com/tomoxl My startup company Synchron (New York, Silicon Valley, Melbourne) has developed a minimally invasive brain machine interface. We are creating a technology that will enable patients with severe paralysis direct thought control over a range of assistive technologies. We are building the hardware and software to achieve this goal. Next year we will conduct our first human trial of this technology. As a clinician, I am currently completing an endovascular neurosurgery fellowship at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City under Dr J Mocco and Dr Alejandro Berenstein. I completed both internal medicine and neurology training in 2013, and then a stroke fellowship in 2015. I was involved in the Royal Melbourne Hospital team led by Bruce Campbell investigating the paradigm-shifting efficacy of mechanical thrombectomy, and published in the NEJM (IF 54).I commenced a PhD in neural engineering part time while completing my neurology training in 2012. The PhD encompassed advanced MRI imaging analysis, hardware device (stent) development, and electrophysiological signal processing. During my PhD I was able to raise over $5 million in research funding and establish the Vascular Bionics laboratory in the University of Melbourne. This included substantial funding from the US defense organization DARPA. My research laboratory now includes two post-docs, two research engineers, 3 PhD students and 4 honors students. Our group is working towards a first-in-human clinical trial at the Royal Melbourne Hospital of a pioneering minimally invasive brain-machine interface technology for the thought-control of electronic devices for patients with paralysis due to spinal cord injury.I have founded three start-up companies since 2012: SmartStent, VascuLab and Synchron.